Up the Gatineau! Selected Articles
Up the Gatineau! Article
This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 18.
The Trapper
Stan Cross
It would be early May in nineteen hundred and twenty-seven or twenty-eight, when my father Wyman Cross was seeding at the south-east corner of lot 24B, range 14 in West Hull (now Chelsea).1 I would be twelve or thirteen years of age at the time, a gilpin, so to speak, later referred to as a gulpin at Meech Creek, probably relating to the enormous appetite some boys have at that age. I had wandered over to where father was seeding, and as I approached, I noticed the horses‘ ears cocked south-westerly, having caught sight of a dog. The dog was accompanying a man. As he came within fifty feet, this person commenced waving his arms up and down and with a smile on his face seemed to be shouting "I'm like a bird, I'm like a bird. I'm looking for a nest."
The gentleman had an appearance of his own. He was a diminutive person with dainty little hands and a high-cheekboned face with the look of a bird of prey, and he was dressed in city attire. From his clothing, it was a bit of a chore to catalogue our new-found acquaintance. A bush worker was easily identifiable with his red and black checkered shirt and high-top leather boots laced and tied only half-way up. The railway section men would arrive in their Carhartt overalls with a Waltham watch tucked in the bib. The gentleman paying a call with his Roman collar turned backwards was a preacher. But this individual's expensive, when new, attire now gave the message that a number of years had elapsed since his earlier prosperity.
Because of his original and impressive salutation, we took to him instantly and relaxed while he explained his predicament. His name was Mr. Proulx. He was a squatter who had lived on the west side of Meech Lake2, and he had been notified to vacate. He did not tell us at first, and no one, if he can help it, gives away trade secrets, but he turned out to be a professional ginseng root gatherer and dealer. This medicinal root3 brought $21 a pound at the time when this sum was more than the value of one month's labour, and $20 would buy the best cow we had on the farm. This occupation has its hazards. One good year for every five to seven bad ones. The state of his attire now gave the message that he was nearing the end of the down cycle in the business.
My father had a suggestion to solve his plight. F.T. Cross had the remnants of a cook camp at Mileage Twelve, bordering the Gatineau River4 where he could move. Since each lot was 113 mile wide, the distance between the two locations as the crow flies was 4 2/3 miles. That would imply that the move, or what we at Meech Creek used to call the flit, would be rather simple. But he would not be moving by crow. He would have to move by team and wagon over the rough roads of the time, whereupon his losses would be enormous. If a load of "flitting" went by, someone was sure to remark, “four flits is worse than a fire.“
I never really saw the gentleman again, but he had no difficulty with F.T. who was one of the best in the world at giving a fellow like this refuge, and I think he stayed there at least three years.
About two months after this, four young men appeared at the farm. I intercepted them. They were Mr. Proulx‘s sons, and like their father, they were extremely affable. I know I was at first suspicious of their kind smiles. My reason for being suspicious could have stemmed from the fact that I was still a gilpin — small. short and with a very large head which partly corrected itself as I grew older and more portly. My only association with the outside world then would have been at the one-room schoolhouse where a child with the least imperfection could be labelled within hours of his arrival. There I had soon learned that adversity provides one with a tremendous ability to resist it.
To return to my association with the Proulx's, we had a two-room sleep camp which was used for hired help and also by myself and brother. The four newly-found acquaintances gladly accepted my invitation to enter.
I had been told by my uncle Walter Moffat, who also fiddled for dances, that that art seemed to attract a class of people who were not entrepreneurial. This applied to the brothers, since Joe, the unmusical brother, was the entrepreneur of the four. He was a fisherman, a hunter and, I discovered, could trap fur like you would not believe.
I had tried to catch a muskrat for several days with no success. I then asked Joe to set the trap for me. He asked, "Do you want it by the front or back leg?“ I said either would be fine. He said, “Oh! I'll take it by the back leg." The next morning the muskrat was mine, and by the back leg.
Three generations of Crosses had lived on this land from 1843 onward and no one could identify ginseng. My father sought to exchange one acre with Joe if he would show him a little patch of ginseng. Joe wisely cut off negotiations.
Joe later got gainful employment in Hull, and moved to 11 Scott Street, near the Hull armories. Being still young, strong and crafty, he was a hard man to keep out of the bush on weekends. He was also no stranger when he parked his automobile at our farm and proceeded with all he could carry in traps, an axe and other items including a small tarpaulin, to a site on lot 26, range 12, to the southwest of our farm. There he would immediately set about thirty traps for muskrats — front leg, back leg, I don‘t know.
This place where Joe often trapped was where the McGraths had eked out a living before 1900. They had piled stones from the field in mounds in order to ready the land for sowing. When they gave up trying to make a living there, the piles remained undisturbed, until Joe rearranged some to make what I later referred to as a sepulchre. He built himself a kind of abode with these stones by removing some in the middle of the pile to make a place where he could lie. A very old cedar log fence provided a quick start for a fire within the sepulchre and it would not take too long for the stone pile, Joe's abode for several hours, to heat up. When sufficiently heated, he would remove the embers, spread the tarpaulin, get in and cover himself with the residue of the tarpaulin. He needed no alarm clock for two especial reasons. First, his sepulchre had its limitations for sleeping as it was not too comfortable. Second, an entrepreneur is largely fueled by anticipation and even if his sepulchre were as comfortable as a suite in the Chateau Laurier, he would have an uncontrollable urge to check his investment after six hours in the stone pile. Likely, with lantern in hand, he would remove trapped muskrat and set again for the daylight harvest. It goes without saying that the number trapped would never be divulged, for the simple reason that competitors don't deserve to be served on a silver platter.
Joe's private life included a nice wife who was a former Gagnon, and a number of children, though not an overabundance. Their house in Hull had bedrooms upstairs, a back kitchen door and the front door at the foot of the stairs. The front door was not used in the winter, and a large chesterfield was placed across it. The kitchen had an oil stove which was beside the outside door. One day the stove in the kitchen exploded. It is presumed that Joe, his wife, and one of the children ran downstairs and tried to remove the chesterfield, for when the fire department got the fire out, the three were discovered there.
I still regret this relatively early demise of one of my best friends, and his end as a “trapper who himself was trapped.“
Footnotes
- This land formed part of the Cross family's second homestead at Meech Creek. They first homesteaded, for thirty-five years, on the one hundred acres immediately to the south.
- The site was on part of lot 28, range 12, along the town line with Eardley.
- Ginseng is valued, particularly in Asia and parts of Europe, as an aphrodisiac credited with rejuvenating powers.
- This was located in range 12, lot 14. It was still under expropriation in connection with the raising of the water level on the Gatineau River in 1926.